## Facts

- Harmon Industries operated a printed-circuit-board facility in Missouri where employees improperly disposed of waste solvents over a period of years.
- Harmon asserted it first learned of the disposal practices in 1987, then self-reported to the Missouri Department of Natural Resources (MDNR) and cooperated with the state investigation.
- MDNR determined the contamination posed no imminent threat and negotiated a state consent decree requiring remediation.
- In the consent decree, MDNR agreed not to seek civil penalties based on Harmon’s voluntary disclosure and cooperation; a Missouri state court approved and entered the decree.
- EPA Region VII later initiated a federal administrative enforcement action under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) seeking civil penalties for the same hazardous-waste violations addressed by the state.
- An EPA Administrative Law Judge found Harmon liable and assessed a $586,716 penalty; the Environmental Appeals Board largely affirmed.
- Harmon challenged the federal penalty in federal district court; the court granted summary judgment for Harmon, set aside the EPA penalty, and held EPA’s action unlawful under RCRA and barred by res judicata.
- EPA and the United States appealed.

## Issues

1. Whether, after a state with an EPA-authorized RCRA program has resolved an enforcement case for specific violations, EPA may bring a separate, duplicative federal enforcement action for civil penalties based on the same conduct.
2. Whether the prior state-court consent decree bars EPA’s later administrative penalty action under res judicata, including whether EPA was in privity with the state for claim-preclusion purposes.

## Decision

- The Eighth Circuit affirmed the district court’s summary judgment for Harmon.
- The court held that RCRA’s state-authorization framework did not permit EPA to impose additional, duplicative civil penalties after Missouri had enforced its authorized program and resolved the matter.
- The court held that the Missouri consent decree was a final judgment that barred EPA’s later penalty action under res judicata because both proceedings arose from the same operative facts and EPA was in privity with Missouri in this context.
- The EPA’s assessed civil penalty was set aside.

## Legal Principles

- In an authorized-state regime under RCRA, a state program operates “in lieu of” the federal program for covered matters, and state enforcement actions carry the “same force and effect” as federal actions within that structure.
- Where RCRA supplies a specific mechanism for federal response to inadequate state enforcement (including withdrawal of state authorization), EPA may not bypass that scheme by bringing a second enforcement action seeking additional penalties for the same violations after a state resolution.
- A state-court consent decree resolving enforcement claims can constitute a final judgment on the merits for res judicata purposes.
- Claim preclusion applies when a later action involves the same nucleus of operative facts, even if it invokes different legal theories or sovereign labels.
- In cooperative federalism settings where a state enforces an EPA-authorized program “in lieu of” federal enforcement, the relationship between the state and EPA may be sufficiently close to establish privity for res judicata.

## Conclusion

The Eighth Circuit held that, after Missouri resolved Harmon’s hazardous-waste violations through a court-approved consent decree under its EPA-authorized RCRA program, EPA could not “overfile” a separate administrative penalty action based on the same conduct, and the state judgment claim-precluded the later federal penalty proceeding.


Harmon Indus., Inc. v. Browner, 191 F.3d 894 (8th Cir. 1999)